The International Action Center supports the call below from the Minnesota Antiwar Committee for Emergency Actions at federal buildings and FBI offices on Monday and Tuesday, Sept. 28 and 29, to support anti-war and international solidarity activists and stop FBI raids and harassment, and urges you to participate in one of the actions listed below or to organize an action in your city if one is not already planned.

In solidarity, Sara Flounders and John Parker, Co-Directors, International Action Center

Emergency actions to support anti-war and international solidarity activists

Stop FBI raids and harassment

We denounce the Federal Bureau of Investigation harassment of anti-war and solidarity activists. The FBI raided seven houses and an office in Chicago and Minneapolis on Friday, September 24, 2010. The FBI handed subpoenas to testify before a federal grand jury to eleven activists in Illinois, Minnesota, and Michigan. The FBI also attempted to intimidate activists in California and North Carolina.

This suppression of civil rights is aimed at those who dedicate their time and energy to supporting the struggles of the Palestinian and Colombian peoples against U.S. funded occupation and war. The FBI has indicated that the grand jury is investigating the activists for possible material support of terrorism charges.

The activists involved have done nothing wrong and are refusing to be pulled into conversations with the FBI about their political views or organizing against war and occupation. The activists are involved with many groups, including: the Twin Cities Anti-War Committee, the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Colombia Action Network, Students for a Democratic Society, and Freedom Road Socialist Organization. These activists came together with many others to organize the 2008 anti-war marches on the Republican National Convention in St. Paul.

We ask people of conscience to join us in fighting this political repression, as we continue working to build the movements against US war and occupation.

Take Action:

Call the U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder at 202-353-1555 or write an email to: AskDOJ@usdoj.gov.

Demand:

• Stop the repression against anti-war and international solidarity activists.

The following is a list of the 19 planned protests that we have heard of so far, and the list is growing. Please participate in the one nearest you, or if there is not one in your city, organize one and let us know at iacenter@iacenter.org so we can publicize it and add it to the list: Please be in touch with the Minnesota Anti-War Committee — www.antiwarcommittee.org

The war on dissent, rather than terrorism, continued full steam with FBI SWAT teams breaking down doors at 7 am Friday (Sept 24) morning and raiding the homes of several anti-war leaders and activists in Minneapolis, Chicago and possibly a couple other Midwest cities. Members of the FBI’s “Joint Terrorism Task Force” spent a few hours at each Minneapolis residence, seizing personal photographs and papers, computers and cell phones as well as serving Federal Grand Jury subpoenas on the various activists.

Obviously the scathing review of post 9-11 FBI “terrorism investigations” targeting various peace and social justice groups completed by the Department of Justice Inspector General (IG) and just issued four days ago gave no pause to the FBI to reflect before continuing to do more of the same. Nor did accompanying media revelations about the FBI having improperly conducted surveillances of an antiwar rally in Pittsburgh; the Catholic Worker peace magazine; a Quaker activist, the Thomas Merton Center in Pittsburgh, of members of the environmental group Greenpeace and People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and of a small student group of anti-war activists in Iowa City, Iowa who were targeted for 9 months in 2008.

National news stories revealed that in one of the investigations, FBI Director Robert Mueller inadvertently providing a fabricated justification for the surveillance of an antiwar rally. From The Boston Globe’s article “Red-Baiting, Circa 2002 – 2006“:

Americans generally underestimate the degree of income inequality in the United States, and if given a choice, would distribute wealth in a similar way to the social democracies of Scandinavia, a new study finds.

For decades, polls have shown that a plurality of Americans — around 40 percent — consider themselves conservative, while only around 20 percent self-identify as liberals. But a new study from two noted economists casts doubt on what values lie beneath those political labels.

According to research (PDF) carried out by Michael I. Norton of Harvard Business School and Dan Ariely of Duke University, and flagged by Paul Kedrosky at the Infectious Greed blog, 92 percent of Americans would choose to live in a society with far less income disparity than the US, choosing Sweden’s model over that of the US.

What’s more, the study’s authors say that this applies to people of all income levels and all political leanings: The poor and the rich, Democrats and Republicans are all equally likely to choose the Swedish model.

Americans should take a page from activists throughout the rest of the world if they’re seriously interested in resisting the massive budget cuts afflicting this country. Effective social change only comes about through mass action – a lesson that has emerged after years of grassroots uprisings in the U.S. and throughout the world. Consider some of the evidence from various cases below.

The French: Don’t Call Them Cheese-Eating Surrender Monkeys

Over a million French workers turned out in the streets this month to protest proposed government budget cutbacks by President Nicolas Sarkozy. The rallies were part of a 24-hour strike that shut down flights and railway services, in addition to closing schools throughout the country. Government plans to raise the retirement age from 60 to 62 motivated these protests, even though France already has one of the lower retirement rates throughout Europe. The opposition is also driven by resistance to plans to fire 7,000 teachers, the proposed lengthening of pay periods for public employees, and plans to cut pension benefits.

The mass turnout of a million people in France is the functional equivalent (after controlling for population differences) of seeing more than 4.5 million organize throughout the United States to protest state budget cuts and mass layoffs. Such a movement has not been seen among public sector workers, despite the fact that this segment of the economy traditionally benefits from the strongest worker organization through its continued reliance on mass unionization.

This is not the first protest in France either in recent years. Last June, nearly 1 million turned out nationwide to protest proposed budget cuts – a sign of a sustained national activist campaign that will not relent until the government backs down on its austerity measures. The case of France demonstrates that necessity doesn’t have to be the mother of invention. Well-off people can organize to protect hard fought wage gains and other benefits, and we don’t need to wait until we’re on the verge of destitution (as Americans are doing) to be engaged in activism and protest. Of course, France’s strong history of labor unionism has helped spur sustained rounds of resistance to budget cuts, whereas the American public has become increasingly divorced from working class unionism in recent decades (unions represent less than 15 percent of all American workers today).

I wasn’t going to do it but that lying homophobic scam artist on the down low forced me to do it And it isn’t like Cadillac Kimberly’s video isn’t all over the Blog-sphere.

Why is it the more they hate on LGBT/T people the queerer and freakier they are? Why do I crack up when I see half of these closet case bigot from associations with word like “Family” or “Traditional” in them and I think, “How does that queen fool his followers? Someone needs to teach the rubes a little “Gaydar” because the closet queens that are using bigotry to scam them might just as well be giving the men in his flocks blow jobs right up there on stage. They are that obvious.

I don’t even have to name names of these prissy damn snakes, they are that obvious to every LGBT/T person who has had the guts to come to grips with who they are and come out.

Now Eddie Long doesn’t even have the integrity to cowboy up and admit it. It’s not that hard Eddie. You are a gay man. Admit it and sell off that monstrosity of a scam. Give the money back and get an honest job.

Settle down with some one of your age and quit lying and hurting your LGBT/T sisters and brothers.

Admit you were wrong to say what you said and try to undo some of the damage you’ve done. And don’t expect LGBT/T folks to love you after all the harm you’ve done.

Perhaps we need a serious 12 Step Program for Closet Case Homophobes to come out of the closet, atone, make amends etc.

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